David Warner has always been billed as something of an innovator, from the early whispers about his ambidextrous batting (since confined, sadly, to the nets) to his appearance in Australia's one-day team before he had played a first-class match. Nobody quite had this in mind, though. But then there has surely never been a reception for a batsman who has lost his wicket in a Test match in England quite like the one that greeted Warner as he made his way back to the Old Trafford dressing rooms on the second day of this third Ashes Test.

Back-stories aside – glancing blows and all that – it was a highly unusual and irreproachably modern set of circumstances that had combined to create one of the great pantomime moments of recent Ashes cricket. Really, this one had everything. Having been jeered to the wicket 10 minutes earlier, Warner played a firm-wristed drive at a turning ball from Graeme Swann, edged to slip via Matt Prior's thigh and was given out.

Warner instantly reviewed the decision, to mild gasps of incredulity around the ground. It is tempting to conclude he must have been confused by the sensation of his bat striking his pad simultaneously, although the suspicion is it would take a set of anaesthetic injections in both hands for a batsman to be unaware of such firm contact with the ball. "I thought Davey hit it," Michael Clarke, who was at the other end, said afterwards. "We had a little discussion in the middle. Let's just say we disagreed. But I said I would back his judgment."

Perhaps Warner hoped vaguely some gremlin in the DRS would gum the works in his favour. The easier conclusion is that his judgment, such as it is, had been mangled by the fevered nature of his reception at the wicket: not just from the crowd but also from Joe Root who walked uncomfortably close before Warner had faced his first ball and seemed to be offering some helpful words of advice on high summer conditions at Old Trafford. Increasingly that initial sense of bafflement over Warner's choice of late-night victim – Really? Little Rooty? – seems less obviously clear-cut.

As the replays appeared on the big screen there was the extraordinary sight of England's players openly laughing at Warner, who was duly given out once more. Cue that raucous reception, more closely reminiscent of the kind of jeering send-off a Premier League football crowd might direct at a red-carded player, and surely the first of its kind in the more mannered atmosphere of a Test match.

This was not Antonio Rattín stalking off down the Wembley tunnel. It was instead simply a batsman who had been given out, the protocol of respectful hush during what is one of sport's more poignant moments – a miniature sporting death – wholly abandoned. Hopefully this was just a one-off trip up the road to the other Old Trafford. Those moments of fraternal silence are one of cricket's key textural qualities.

But then this is a ground that was home for many years to its own infamous Pit of Hate in the members' area – from which this newspaper's chief cricket correspondent once had a pint pot hurled at his head during a Sunday League game – now relocated to the stand by the Statham End.

Warner is another extremely wide Australian cricketer, blessed with an almost alarmingly muscular neck and forearms that resemble large cured hams, but even he managed to look small and sad and slightly touching as he walked off confronted by a startling wall of noise from a pre-lunch Friday crowd.

Not that Clarke was having any of it. "I can guarantee it won't have affected Davey one bit," he said. "He loves it [being the villain]. He's got that aggressive approach. He won't take a step back."

Warner had looked bristlingly malevolent in his brief stay at the crease – but then his default setting is bristlingly malevolent: no doubt he potters around his local Tesco Metro bristling malevolently.

He has at least now made more than a glancing impact on this series. Perhaps this was even another first for Australia's top-order innovator. Kevin Pietersen was vehemently booed when he first played for England in South Africa. Mike Brearley and Ray Illingworth were given similar treatment in Australia. Ricky Ponting was booed in 2005 and walked off at Trent Bridge yelling up at England's balcony. Mohammad Amir was treated to the full-body roughing up of a chilly Long Room silence – he may or may not have noticed – as he walked out to bat the morning after the spot-fixing story first appeared.

This, though, was something else: and, it is to be hoped, a one-off if only for the sake of preserving cricket's own natural variation. Sport does not offer many opportunities to show anything other than jeering partisanship. It was notable that, post-Warner, the lovely warm ovation from the same section of the crowd as Clarke walked off having been dismissed for a brilliant 187 seemed doubly refreshing.